|
I Coast magistrates attacked
11/03/2004 17:29 - (SA)
Abidjan - Organisations representing magistrates and prosecutors in Ivory Coast on Thursday urged them to stay at home in protest after several of their colleagues were beaten up in Abidjan's main court building.
The attacks on Tuesday took place "under the benevolent gaze of security forces, who remained strangely impassive," the Union of Magistrates in Ivory Coast and a smaller union said in a statement.
Hundreds of Young Patriots, a group which supports President Laurent Gbagbo, and students had gathered on Tuesday outside the law courts to protest against the appointment of magistrates by Justice Minister Henriette Diabate, the deputy leader of an opposition party.
Though security forces turned out, including the west African country's riot police, some of the demonstrators burst into the building and beat up several magistrates as well as local journalists.
One magistrate, Olivier Grah Ange, has been in hospital since the attacks, according to the local press.
"In light of what happened, their safety is no longer guaranteed at their workplace," magistrates and prosecutors agreed at a meeting to call on all members of the profession "to stay at home until further notice," said the statement.
"It is unacceptable that the forces of law and order assigned to the protection of magistrates and the judicial institution show evidence of culpable inertia and sometimes even accompany the aggressors into magistrates' offices to remove them," the statement added.
Diabate, who comes from the Rally of Republicans (RDR) led by Alassane Ouattara, is a member of a national unity government which also includes former rebels whose uprising in September 2002 divided the country in two.
On Wednesday, all of Ivory Coast's political parties apart from Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) issued a joint statement condemning the "impunity" they said the president's youth movement enjoys.
They declared that those responsible should be "tracked down and punished".
The magistrates' unions on Thursday demanded an inquiry into the violence and said that "legal proceedings should immediately begin against all those responsible, those who gave orders and their accomplices."
Even before civil war broke out, Ivory Coast was politically divided between Gbagbo supporters, mainly in the south, and northerners who back Ouattara and the RDR.
The opposition politician has been prevented from taking part in presidential elections since a ruling that he did not meet the conditions then required, with both parents born in the Ivory Coast.
Edited by Anthea Jonathan
|
News
